Brazil's Lucas Scafini Wins EPT Monte Carlo FPS Main Event (€250,000)

The 2022 PokerStars European Poker Tour presented by Monte-Carlo Casino®️ kicked off with the €1,100 France Poker Series (FPS) Main Event, and after four starting flights and three more days of play, Brazil’s Lucas Scafini claimed the trophy and €250,000 after defeating Italy’s Fabio Peluso at the end of a lengthy heads-up battle that lasted nearly three hours at the Monte-Carlo Sporting complex on the dazzling French Riviera.

This year’s FPS Main Event saw a record-breaking field of 1,918 entries create a massive €1,841,280 prize pool, smashing the previous record for the event. Players from 62 different countries came to compete, with France represented by nearly 45% of the field.

Several PokerStars Ambassadors made the money and were looking for a deep run but fell short of the final table, including Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, Alejandro “Papo MC” Lococo, and Steve Enriquez.

Scafini was the overall Day 1 chip leader after bagging the top stack in the fourth and final starting flight, and he was able to go wire-to-wire by being the only player with chips at the end of the tournament.

€1,100 FPS Main Event Final Table Results

*denotes heads-up deal

Action of the Day

Nine players converged on the final table near the end of Day 3, where Florian Decamps, Kevin Abecassis, and Tahar Said all bowed out before bagging time, leaving six players to return for the fourth and final day.

The final day began with a big pot between the eventual heads-up players, with Scafini soaring to the top of the leaderboard right away. Shortly after, two similar and unlikely hands occurred, where an at-risk player spiked a two-outer on the river to stay alive. Eventually, it would be France’s Francois Vincenti to make his exit in sixth place after running his ace-jack into ace-king.

Israel’s Jacob Amsellem had a red-hot Day 3 and began Day 4 as the chip leader, but found himself on the losing end of several incredibly tough river beats. It was he who had been two-outered by Vincenti earlier, and not long after that, he had his aces cracked by running cards. After recovering from both of those beats, he got the rest of his chips in with top set against Peluso in a pot that would determine the chip lead, but yet another two-outer on the river eliminated him in fifth and propelled Peluso to the top of the leaderboard.

Hungary’s Tibor Nagygyorgy was the next player to make his exit in fourth place when he flopped top pair but fell to Peluso’s turned flush. Florian Guimond was the last French player in the field, but he wasn’t able to bring the title home as his ace-nine ran smack into Peluso’s kings to finish in third.

That set up a heads-up match between Scafini and Peluso with the latter beginning with over two times the amount of chips. Scafini took the lead before long, although the two stayed fairly even in chips. They discussed a deal and reached an agreement to give more prize money to the second-place finisher and leave the eventual winner with exactly €250,000. The players traded chips back-and-forth with Scafini being at risk of elimination at one point, as well as Peluso.

Eventually, nearly three hours after the beginning of heads-up play began, an unavoidable cooler transpired when Peluso got his stack of roughly 12 big blinds in with pocket jacks against Scafini’s pocket kings. The board ran out all blanks, and Scafini rejoiced and basked in his victory with Brazilian football star Neymar and the rest of his Brazilian rail, while he proudly held the trophy high as he had finally won the title and €250,000 top prize by being the last player standing at the end of the sensational tournament.

Stay tuned as the PokerNews team continues to bring coverage from the French Riviera of select events from the 2022 PokerStars European Poker Tour presented by Monte-Carlo Casino®️.